When my husband (Kyle) and I bought this house, we were looking for a place that would provide enough room to have a garden. We wanted it to be flat, have good sun, a little shade, and offer room to build the garden we have been planning for years. In our first apartment, we grew shamrocks and a tomato plant with varying results.
With each new place we moved the garden grew bigger. At our place in Meadville, on a steep hill of a plot of land, we bought a Green Stalk system to maximize our vertical potential. In the house before this one, we created a garden of containers utilizing totes we had from moving and five-gallon buckets. It was better but not the best it could be.
Container garden from 2022.
We craved something less plastic, more grounded. And so with 2025 spreading out before us, we have been planning a new project – an in-ground garden full of plants selected carefully, but Kyle can share more details about that in his own words.
I’m excited to read his thoughts here as a contributing writer because his passion for gardening has taught me so much in our 11 years together. As I mentioned in my very first post, this blog is a little of this and a little of that. I’m excited to share more about life beyond the yarn and the thread, it should be inspiring scenery for sketching! Which I have not done since we moved but I am craving to do once again. Here’s a snapshot of what we grew in our container garden several years ago. I hope you will join us on this adventure. 🙂
My new favorite way to cook potatoes is by opening a jar of our pressure-canned potatoes and being far ahead in the potato cooking process! I didn’t grow up canning, as I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, so I didn’t know the joy of not having to peel and boil potatoes because you did it beforehand. This was our second time pressure canning potatoes, we did this back in 2023 and put up a year’s worth of potatoes in an evening, not bad a trade-off for several hours of work.
Hot Po-tah-toe, Hot Po-tah-toe
This time we processed 30 lbs and dedicated an entire day to peeling, parboiling, packing, and pressure canning – it was a ton of work but was rewarding. The kitchen in the house made it a lot easier to work in, which is funny because there isn’t that much counter space in our current kitchen. We’ve had to get creative like adding two tables along the wall with the fridge, because the room was pretty empty when we purchased it, and it is a galley style like the kitchen in the previous house we were renting, and yet it felt luxurious which is great!
The addition of our grill to cook meals on while the stove top was in use sterilizing jars and pressure canning was a game changer! No ordering takeout needed or feeling stressed by the clean-up in a hangry state. I think that was the best part! I also liked how we batched the potatoes into two groups of 15 lbs. This provided a rhythm to the process. We processed the 15 lbs of potatoes and then ate lunch while they were in the pressure canner, and then repeated the steps after lunch, then we made pizza in the evening while the last batch was processing.
It gave us 21 jars, I believe, of potatoes that will be a great asset to our pantry. I’m grateful we were able to do this without any mishaps. Each time we do a food preservation project I feel less like a fish out of water. It’s starting to become a tradition in my life, instead of an alien practice that scares me.
Let’s Jamboree, Buddy!
Mario Party Jamboree came on October 17, it’s the third installment of the game for the Nintendo Switch, although there are many more versions of this game from previous systems that I would love to play if I had a chance. This one caught our eye for the innovative boards, the vast amount of playable characters, and the new twist of the Jamboree Buddy. A character that appears on the board and will be your ally for a stretch of turns.
We’ve played four of the seven boards so far – Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party, Rainbow Galleria, Goomba Lagoon, and Roll’em Raceway – the most innovative of the four, in my opinion. Roll’em Raceway combines features of Mario Kart – a track and racecar, with the board game style of Mario Party. It’s fun and irritating because the track gives you a guaranteed stop at Boo.
Goomba Lagoon is a favorite of ours for the introduction of high tide and low tide, which changes the paths on the board. There are also ziplines and a volcano that can shoot coin-collecting or coin-stealing opportunities onto the board. I like the pirate vibes of this board!
Rainbow Galleria feels like we’re finally let loose in the Coconut Mall racetrack from Mario Kart, but instead of racing, there are multiple levels of stores in this mall with escalators and elevators to move between the levels. It puts the focus on shopping which is unique, there is also a stamp rally attached to the board. I like these features and despite its difficulty rating of 4/5 stars, I think it was one of the most approachable of the new boards.
The final board we have played so far is Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party which feels like the perfect land for the Great British Bakeoff Tent to be! It’s a cutesy cottage-core board with mega wiggler, shy guy tea parties, goombas making pancakes, and more! I like the “normal” format of this board. It’s a classic, like Woody Woods.
My favorite new characters are Spike, Toadette, Toad, and the Goomba. My opinion of the Jamboree Buddy feature is mixed, and I think it depends on which option of ally spawns. They all have unique skills and the competition to earn their allyship is also different from character to character.
For me, it depends on how the individual game is going. If it is a game that is dragging on, I dread the notification that a player has reached the Jamboree Buddy. So far Wario and Donkey Kong have been the allies that I enjoy, Bowser Jr. and Mario have been the least interesting to me. Yoshi’s competition was dang difficult! I was not expecting his to be my least favorite to participate in. I love Yoshi. He’s my ult bias of the Mario franchise.
Operation Bun Bun Binkies
We applied to adopt a rabbit from our local rabbit rescue, the largest dedicated rabbit rescue in the North East. This amazing no-kill shelter is a gem for their work to save rabbits from abuse and neglect, to give them the place to heal and be ready for adoption, and their work in the community to show what makes rabbits such an amazing animal, won us over when we visited a few weeks ago. The rescue is named E.A.R.S. or Erie Area Rabbit Society (and Rescue).
We have been busy preparing for this next step, researching veterinarians, proper rabbit diet, and proper habitat guidelines to make our house a safe and welcoming environment for our new furry friend. It’s been a roller coaster for me as I don’t like change, but I know that we are ready for this step and want to give a deserving bunny a home. I’m hoping to share more about this process and E.A.R.S. as we continue to move forward.
Did you know that rabbits are the 3rd most popular pet after dogs and cats in the United States? They are also abandoned at an alarming rate, usually in the wild, and quickly die. This is because they are not wild animals, and have been bred to be pets not to survive in the wild. It’s estimated that 4 out of 5 rabbits bought at Easter are abandoned.
They are also bought as “starter” pets that are dumped when people lose interest. They are bred as a way to make a quick buck and are kept in inhumane conditions, it’s a growing problem that needs to be addressed in my home country. Not to mention the issue of animal testing, which uses rabbits as experiments for cosmetic development. Rabbits can’t speak for themselves and we need to speak for them. It’s something that God has really put on my heart. They are incredibly gentle, loving, social, and intelligent animals that we are misunderstanding. I’d like to be a part of changing that.
In Portal 2, Cave Johnson has an iconic rant about lemons that may have been the inspiration for my Saturday plan – to make dairy-free lemon curd from scratch.
To clarify, no lemons were exploded. But they were zested, juiced, and combined into a luscious lemon sauce and baked into lemon bars. Tart, sweet, buttery, lemon bars.
“All right, I’ve been thinking, when life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade! Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man whose gonna burn your house down – with the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”
-Cave Johnson, Aperture Laboratories
But why did Cave Johnson speak so deeply to my mood on Saturday morning, one of the best times of the week? Well my dysfunctional family, of course. Communication is truly an art form, and for some relationships, healthy communication seems as easy as replicating a Michelangelo masterpiece with a butter knife. I am a member of that club. I feel like sometimes a conversation with my mom is doomed from the start. I call her and there is something in the air. A mistaken tone she finds in me, a lack of matching her extroverted, neurotypical energy.
The inability to recognize drama or harshness in her tone. My anxiety and frustration at being accosted by questions, picking remarks, or in general still not living up to whatever I was supposed to. It’s a mess, a mess that continues to respawn after numerous attempts to get rid of this and live a drama-free life with the mom that I do deeply love even if sometimes I get exasperated at her. This was one of those conversations, I did something and the verbal missiles were locking on me, which was really disappointing because it was supposed to be a simple conversation – what time are you coming up to celebrate my husband’s birthday?
Instead, there was chaos, my confusion at why there was chaos with questions followed by accusations of trying to fight and being told I was being a problem, gaslit into the aggressor when I held my temper in check and just asked questions. There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. I was being baited into a fight and it sucked. It was a conversational sucker punch. Some weeks I don’t even want to pick up the phone, I yearn to move far away from the possibility of hanging out with her, because I just want to be loved not picked at. Being lonely but happy feels better than being close and miserable. I feel like she brings all the drama-ma-ma-ma-ma and then runs away from me after her work is done.
In the screaming silence that followed the nasty encounter, I felt confusion, anger, hurt, sadness, failure, shame, disappointment, a building pressure of anxiety and depression, and the complex childhood trauma memories flooding back of her gaslighting me into thinking I was a kid with an un-teachable spirit, a stubborn child who spirit needed to be broken because seeing things differently from her was a sin.
I feel sorry for my mom because none of those things are true, and keeping me at arm’s length hurts both of us. We only have so much time on this earth, wouldn’t it be better to be laughing instead of arguing, smiling instead of crying?
I’ve learned there is nothing wrong with me. I’m neuro-divergent and God made me this way for a reason. There is beauty in being different, but she can’t see that. She sees me as difficult, and I in turn see her as small-minded.
Recently, I’ve turned to baking when I feel down in the dumps. For a while, baking was quite painful for me, after Grandma passed away in 2020. She was the one who taught me how to bake and that void made baking a chore. Since watching the Great British Bake Off, I’ve found my baking delight once again. We had a bunch of lemons on hand for a separate recipe, and since the rest needed to be used, I decided to make something I’d never made from scratch before. Lemon curd.
They make it on Bake-Off and I used to love eating lemon bars and lemon meringue pie as a kid, it was Papa’s favorite pie. We had it each year on his birthday. It was the bomb. The tart, lemony sharpness of the filling with the pillowy sweet clouds of meringue on top, slightly browned like a marshmallow with a flakey crust. Scrumptious.
Fun fact: My grandma dressed, acted, and looked a lot like Mary Berry. Watching Bake Off is like a hug.
And you know what, baking helped. I felt the tension melt from my shoulders as I zested the lemons and squeezed the juice into the bowl. The delicacy of separating yolks from egg whites required me to slow down, to breathe through the emotional stress. I made a cup of herbal tea and began work on the sugar and butter. After combining it came time to use the bain-marie to slowly temper the eggs and cook until thickened. The result was a dreamy curd that I was hoping for!
Out of pain, something beautiful came, and the next day I made shortbread for the lemon bars and layered the golden yellow lemon sauce into the pan for a delight I hadn’t had since childhood. Next time we’ll make that lemon meringue pie.
I’m glad I’ve learned coping mechanisms like baking, cleaning, stimming, etc so that I am not tempted to rage at my mom, clench my jaw, get drunk, or go on a shopping spree to fill the pain with stuff. It’s been a journey but through my tumultuous twenties, I learned that the dysfunction is never going away but who I am and how I respond to it are not beholden to other people and their poor behavior. And that is true freedom.
Have you ever made lemon curd? Do you like lemon meringue pie or lemon bars? What’s your go-to way to calm down after a stressful encounter? Thank you, dear reader, for coming along on this blogging journey with me. I’m incredibly thankful for you.
Have you ever tasted picked daikon? It’s a delightfully vinegary and crunchy root vegetable surprise from a vegetable I’m not sure I would have tried without the pickling. Popular for both Korean banchan and Japanese cuisine – takuan. As my first canning “solo” project, I decided yes this would be a fun place to start. I thought of the stir fry, noodle, and snack opportunities!
I’m so glad Kyle bailed me out because oh my, it was a lot more work than I expected. I was fine with the mise en place. Peeling, chopping, and soaking the radish in salt to extract liquid was no big deal. I find this part of canning relaxing. Where I got in the weeds was the part that involves boiling water.
Making Pickled Daikon Radish
As a clumsy person, placing glass jars into boiling water to sanitize was daunting. The hissing cauldron of steam and water showed me its fury a few times. Once I got passed getting burned, there was the tiny detail of not breaking the jars when placed into the boiling water. Boiling lids to boot.
Now to the second part of canning, I take for granted when working with Kyle – his ability to understand pickle brines. He can find peace in the process where my head is still computing how this all works. Needless to say, I got nervous and asked him to help me with making a safe and accurate pickle brine for these picked radishes (takuan). 🌞
As I mentioned briefly in #1 – Welcome I am studying Japanese, something I plan to share more of at a later point, but with studying Japanese, canning this Japanese dish gave me the opportunity to practice writing hiragana. I chose to label the jars in Japanese to give myself the opportunity to practice not only writing the syllables of the hiragana writing system but to hopefully retain these syllables in my brain by having to read the word in Japanese. It’s a small detail, but I hope to do more in order to commit the language systems and words to heart.
Crosley: A Fine Car
We had a rather big delight dazzle our television on Thursday night – the premiere of The Grand Tour’s Eurocrash special which may be the best one they’ve made on The Grand Tour. I say that every time a new one premieres, but I don’t know, this one just hit a new stride and then topped all my expectations. It’s like the new Ateez album that was released on June 16, I was a fan and then they made the Bouncy (KHot Chilli Peppers) Music Video and I’m fangirling even harder.
I’ve watched Eurocrash twice since Thursday and I’ve laughed as much as I do when I watch Top Gear UK with Clarkson, Hammond, and May. Their creativity continues to surprise me.
I particularly enjoyed the three cars selected for this road trip through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia. Richard chose the toon-town convertible truck, the Chevy SSR. It looks like something Goofy would drive around Disney World in the 1990s.
Jeremy’s Cruella De Ville car I absolutely loved because I have an affection for cars aesthetics between the 1920s-1940s cars. I love design from that time period and sometimes I wish the shift in car design into the 1950s had been pushed back for a few decades. The Mitsuoka Le Seyde reminded me of the cars in The Legend of Korra actually.
Now James’ car was a whole other ball game, it was an actual 1940s car that aside from the terrible engine seemed almost futuristic to me in that wonderfully nostalgic way of the Jetsons. I think Crosley had some good ideas with it if only the motor was made for an actual car. The hot rod with a specific slogan was their best comedy backup car to date!
I left that special feeling properly chuffed and dreaming of visiting the beautiful countries of Eastern Europe.
We had a busy weekend, many canning projects to preserve, and some errands to run. The usual weekend things. I’ve noticed the more hobbies my husband and I take on, the happier we are because there is just something enticing to us about going to bed worn out from the hard work with a smile of accomplishment on our faces. I’ve started to keep a journal of our weekends, how we did the projects, and little details that happened – like little silly things that make me smile or how we put the recipes together. Having that little record of these weekends that otherwise could be a blur of repetition and hard work makes all these moments spent with Kyle, sweeter.
Friday Sunshine
I want to remember those tiny drops of sunshine moments that make life a remarkable story. To slow down and think through those bits of joy sprinkled within the mundane and chaotic. On Friday after work, we stopped by our local Aldi to pick up potatoes and vegetables to preserve and the mushrooms we wanted were in stock and $0.99 a carton. The sun was warm, bright, and revealing the splendor of summer to come. We drove with the windows down listening to Babel by Mumford and Sons – a college throwback.
Moderngurlz posted a banger of a video about Chanel and I spent my late afternoon soaking in the sounds of nature while I wrapped up a panel of a sweater tank. In the golden hour, my next-door neighbor, a good friend texted me and I stopped by for a visit – I love those moments of fellowship and Kpop discussion. Her daughter had a fundraiser for her school and I had the opportunity to participate in what makes communities great – helping each other. That evening we watched round one of the Pro Bull Riding Tour in Everett, Washington. My favorite animal athlete Domino had a good out, and the Cowboys got a few qualified rides but mostly injuries.
Saturday Fluff
I started the day with the newest Bernadette Banner upload on corsetry and a bowl of fresh kiwi, scone, and dairy-free whipped cream. On Saturday, the weather became a whole new season. It was the misty, cool gray of an Irish day. With rain jacket in tow, we went to Walmart which is not my favorite place on a Saturday – because it seems to be everyone’s favorite place on a Saturday – it was the most happening place in town. Despite the crowd, we met the nicest employee who helped us match some paint. Well we tried to match some paint and it didn’t go as planned but those moments of searching for the right color formula for the paint shade “Reindeer Fur” while discussing the quirks of horse hair plaster were a joy. Like watching an episode of Gilmore Girls, the small-town charm peaked.
My favorite place to run an errand is the Agway store. What is Agway? A local feed supply, pet, and garden store that dots the South Western Pennsylvania landscape. It has the garden things that you actually need and knowledgable people, it has the smells from hay, to fish food, to blood meal fertilizer – the funkiest garden smell. It also has bunnies and ferrets! I used to have a pet bunny, and my friend had a pet ferret, I love small furry creatures so this place gives me all the feels. I want to adopt another bunny, yet our current rental does not allow pets so for now I soak up the small moments of bunny cuteness at the Agway. This time did not disappoint! I got to hear the bun nibble on a small snack, flop on her bed and make some teeth purr chatter as she drifted off to a nice nap. I also got to pet a ferret! The employees regularly tend to any animals they have and so while the employee was playing with one of the ferrets she called me over to give the ferret some attention. It did try to bite me but it was still cute.
Later on, the day was a symphony of potato peels, random snacks, canning jars, and episodes of No Reservations. The Ozarks and Heartland episodes. Recently, Domino’s opened a store in my town, one of the only delivery places I can eat at since I have a dairy/beef intolerance. My food of choice is Mango Habanero Wings. Not having to cook was a delight but then our delivery driver showed up in a sweet street-style look with bright orange sneakers and a black and white camo coat. The fashion scene around here is pretty dull, so seeing anyone mix it up gives me a small delight. In the late hours of canning, we caught a live show on Sirius XM The Message from Blessing Offor. His music is uplifting and soulful. Highly recommend checking him out. With a cup of Chamomille tea in hand, the night ended with a Simple Living Alaska video. A great way to end a long day of hard work.
Sunday Steam
A dish I make a lot is Miso Soup, a dish you need a good broth to layer as the base. A pantry staple Kyle and I have wanted to learn is the art of crafting a layered, umami-bomb-style, broth. I’m happy to say, it turned out well! Adding another table to our canning setup made the difference, there was so much counter space this time. We spent the day chopping, stirring, and managing the steam emanating from the kitchen.
I leveled up in my piano lesson book to Unit Five. The short round of the PBR was theatrical to the end. I sewed my sweater tank together and began the final panel. We watched a mix of No Reservations and Hometown. I dreamed of wallpapering a future historical house like Erin and maybe visiting Africa one day, while taking in Anthony Bourdain’s travels through Namibia and Ghana. At the end of the day, I reveled in a bowl of noodles with fresh broth and tried to not think of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova as we enjoyed the Romania episode of No Reservations. T’was a good weekend.
One Rabbit Riot 